View From the Phlipside – Pay for the Media

My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the movies and more.  I love ’em and I hate ’em and I always have an opinion.  Call this The View From the Phlipside.

The single greatest issue facing the modern media industry is a simple one.  How do we pay for it?  Everything else falls to way side before that one great question.  The reality is that as it stands right now there doesn’t appear to be a clear cut answer.

On the one side you have the consumers of media.  That’s you and me and our children.  It’s very clear that we LIKE the free model.    Like the divine right of kings we think it is simply owed to us.

On the other side you have the old line media who want the business to stay the way it’s always been.  Over the years they’ve made a lot of money that way and what’s not to like about that?

Neither side is going to get what they want.  The business must change and we must begin paying for it.  The alternatives may be worse.  Take a look at what AOL is doing with a “virtual newsroom”.  They have hired an editorial staff and then work with freelance reporters to cover stories that are chosen by reader interest.  I worry about two things with this model.  First, the lack of a dedicated corps of reporters with resources to fall back on means we may not get the depth of reporting to truly cover the story.  If you’re freelance and you need to crank out stories to pay the bills how likely are you to really dig for all the background as compared to a faster, more surface story?  The second problem is choosing stories by reader interest.  Let me tell you I got a real shiver when I realized I had just read a science fiction story based on this very concept.  The story is “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi from 2008.  In it reporters are rewarded by the number of hits they receive from readers and stories are judged on the basis of audience interest.  This media world is dominated by stories of pop stars and scandal.  A story about how that society may be killing itself is hammered by the editorial staff who see that the audience just isn’t interested.

Finding a way to bring quality professional news reporting to the 21st Century is vitally important task for the industry.  And all of us agreeing to pay for it is just the start of the solution.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

“The View From the Phlipside” airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright – Jay Phillippi 2010